Brian Malow

Posts Tagged ‘CERN’

Today I had the most fun I’ve ever had on Twitter, thanks to the OPERA experiment working out of CERN, home of the Large Hadron Collider.

The blogosphere is ablaze with news that they seem to have detected neutrinos traveling faster than light. If true, it would be the biggest science news of the century, overturning one of the most fundamental concepts in physics. There is obviously much skepticism amongst scientists. For a typically insightful explanation, check out Bad Astronomer Phil Plait‘s post: Faster-than-light travel discovered? Slow down, folks

The Twitter fun began when a discussion between two physicist/mathematician-types, Blake Stacey (@blakestacey) and S.C. Kavassalis (@sc_k) led Blake to tweet:

@sc_k Maybe we need to counterbalance the HEP blogohedron with a Twitter meme? e.g., #mundaneneutrinoexplanations

Then he spun out a few funny examples of more mundane explanations for the unusual neutrino measurement:

#CERN physicists did arithmetic on old Pentium computers

#CERN physicists let undergrads near the experiment

Calculations done by visiting Americans who still don’t get the metric system.

Our most recent video for Time.com is about the new ABC series, “FlashForward.” The show is based on the 1999 novel by Canadian science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer, whom we met this summer at the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop.

On Friday afternoon, my taller half and I checked into the Wild Palms Hotel in Sunnyvale. Sadly, jealously, Tara would not be joining me at the unconference. As I frolicked at the vast Google empire, she’d be getting to know every square inch of our little hotel room. Whereas I’d be interacting with 200 scientists and science and science fiction writers, she’d be interfacing with a stack of science and science fiction books. I’d have Neal Stephenson; she’d have The Diamond Age. I’d have Ann Druyan; she’d have Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.

Minutes later, Prabhat Agarwal introduced himself. Prabhat is a former condensed-matter physicist who now works for the Future and Emerging Technologies Unit at the European Commission. His job is to identify and support new areas of information-related science, and he told us about his personal interest in how we recognize something as new. I’m still convinced that we rely mostly on the new-concept smell.

This was the first of several conversations I’d have with Brian and Gia. Brian is a particle physicist who works on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva. Gia calls herself a science groupie and broadcaster. She’s worked on some pretty cool stuff like the CERN podcast and Walking with Robots and the new X-Files movie.

They are not only a couple but also a couple of the people I’d see the most throughout the weekend. We ended up in a lot of the same sessions, although I was sorry to miss Brian’s LHC session.

We talked a bit about the LHC and laughed about the well-publicized fear that it would create micro-black holes that would destroy the Earth. Although there is a chance that MBH’s will be created, it would require that the universe contain a few extra unseen dimensions, an aspect that is wished for by string theorists and others but still unproven (at least by us terrans in our local 4-dimensional spacetime realm). Also, if created, the black holes would be so small and likely disappear so quickly (due to Hawking Radiation) that they may be undetectable by the LHC’s sensors. A far cry from devouring the planet.

For an excellent fictional treatment of a similar catastrophe on Mars, check out Larry Niven’s Hugo Award-winning short story, The Hole Man. Much fun!

A few minutes before we started boarding the shuttles, Steve Goldfinger introduced himself to me and Tara. He lives up in the Marin area, as I recall, and we live in SF. Steve is co-founder of Global Footprint Network. We sat together on the ride to the Googleplex, discussing sustainability (his field) and science comedy (mine).

Steve also mentioned having been impressed with some science fiction by Kim Stanley Robinson – although we laughed when he accidentally called him “Kim Stanley Andersen,” which I suggested was a mash-up with Hans Christian Andersen.